The Real Costs of Medicare

The Truth Behind the Statistics: What Does Medicare Cost You and Our Nation?

In this heated political age, one of the major hot-button issues is Medicare. Across the nation, people are asking, “how much does Medicare cost?” Both extremes of the partisan machine are spewing facts and numbers that somehow fail to add up correctly under any sort of scrutiny. Usually, the sources are heavily biased and are synthesized for the purpose of political bantering. The problem with this is that people are becoming confused and misinformed. With every false statistic spewed, there’s another individual making what could be a rash decision. These choices can snowball until the system so many depend on becomes essentially broken. For the sake of properly educating the populous, here are the real statistics about the costs of Medicare.

Personal Costs

According to medicare.gov, the government’s online Medicare portal, the personal Medicare cost a person can reasonably expect for a Part A monthly premium is $451. While that price can’t just be shrugged off, it certainly covers a myriad of issues and factors. In fact, with this plan, you pay nothing for hospice and home health care. Part B’s price isn’t so set in stone. The premium per month depends on the filer’s income. If an individual makes up to $107,000 a year individually, or $214,000 jointly, the monthly cost will be $139 per month. At most, if an individual makes a whopping $214,000 alone or $428,000 jointly, they will pay $319 per month.

Federal Costs

Because it is a federal service, there’s logically going to be some sort of national price tag attached to Medicare. In 2011, $482 billion taxpayer dollars went directly into the system. Meaning, that the roughly 140 million taxpayers chip in about $3,450 to Medicare every year. Unfortunately, there’s a significant portion of this Medicare cost that is used illegitimately. According to a 2012 Forbes article, the Federal Government reported recovering over $4 billion in fraudulent Medicare payments.